United States or San Marino ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
You know when Gospatrick fled to Scotland his sons went with him. Ethelreda, his girl, went too, and she is to marry, they say, Duncan, Malcolm's eldest son by Ingebiorg. So Gospatrick will find himself, some day, father-in-law of the King of Scots." "I will warrant him to find his nest well lined, wherever he be. But of yourself?" "I refused to go. I could not face again that bleak black North.
Philip lost his first wife in 1190; in 1193 his designs against England caused him to marry Ingebiorg, a sister of the King of Denmark. Immediately after the marriage he took a dislike to her, refused to live with her, and obtained from an assembly of his own clergy a sentence of divorce, founded on an allegation of some very distant relationship between him and his new wife.
Ingebiorg and her brother appealed to Pope Celestine III, who declared the sentence of divorce illegal and null. Philip not only paid no attention to the numerous letters and legates of the Pope, but he tried to make the divorce irrevocable by taking a new wife.
Innocent, desiring to be conciliatory, actually declared Agnes' two children legitimate. Philip still, however, pressed for a divorce from Ingebiorg, declaring that he was bewitched by her. After his victory over John of England in 1204 he became more than ever obdurate to papal remonstrances, and he even contemplated a new marriage.
Those bishops who dared to publish the interdict were seriously maltreated by the King; but after nine months of resistance the distress of his people at the cessation of religious services caused him to submit; he pretended to take back Ingebiorg, and the interdict was raised . But he did not send away Agnes, and a renewal of the interdict was only averted by Agnes' death in 1201.
The moral condition of Europe was seldom worse. Philip of France had repudiated his Danish wife, Ingebiorg, apparently for no more valid reason than that he liked some one better; Alfonso of Castile took his own half-sister to wife. Oriental manners, imported from Palestine or learnt from commercial intercourse in the Mediterranean, seemed to be invading the furthest regions of the West.
In 1209 Innocent excommunicated John, and in 1212 declared him deposed. Despite the continued obstinacy of Philip of France in the matter of Ingebiorg, Innocent called upon him to execute the papal sentence; and Philip, thinking that the aid of Denmark would be useful, ended the twenty years' dispute and accorded to Ingebiorg the position of Queen for the rest of his reign.
Thus his contest with Philip of France in favour of the repudiated Ingebiorg commanded the sympathy of every right-thinking person in Europe; his desire for the separation of Italy and Germany under different rulers was popular in Italy; while to attempt an union of the Churches of East and West, to crush out heresy in the south of France and elsewhere, to promote a new crusade in the East, were all regarded as duties falling strictly within the papal sphere.
After several rebuffs he found in Agnes of Meran, the daughter of a Bavarian noble, one who was willing to accept the dubious position . Innocent III at once took up an uncompromising attitude, and instructed his legates that if Philip refused to send away Agnes and to restore Ingebiorg, they should put the kingdom under an interdict preparatory to a sentence of personal excommunication against Philip and Agnes themselves.
Word Of The Day